Photos of the killed hostages line up the walls of the Beslan School #1. The European Court for Human Rights has concluded that the Russian troops were responsible for killing the hostages in 2004, not terrorists, as Putin government portrayed it. Over 330 hostages were killed in the massacre, including 186 children. (Image: Wikipedia)

The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in detail but which are too indicative of broader developments to ignore.

Consequently, Windows on Eurasia presents a selection of 13 of these other and typically neglected stories at the end of each week. This is the 39th such compilation. It is only suggestive and far from complete – indeed, once again, one could have put out such a listing every day — but perhaps one or more of these stories will prove of broader interest.

Unpaid Russians Forced to Beg for Food. The economic situation for many in Russia is now so dire that some are forced to beg for food. In other economic news, wage arrears continue to grow, and an ever-increasing share of highly educated Russians, a group Moscow can’t easily or quickly replace, are leaving the country and calling it future growth even more into question.

Muscovites Protest High Density Construction. Residents of the Russian capital are upset by the plans of officials to build ever higher density housing and to eliminate their parks and playgrounds, the result of a new law that the Russian media celebrated as creating “green spaces” in Russian cities but that in fact has opened the way to precisely the opposite outcome.

There is No Room for Satire in Russia Today. Forty years ago, Tom Lehrer stopped writing his satirical songs because he said there was no room for satire in a world where Henry Kissinger had been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, a Russian commentator has said the same thing about his country – there is no room for satire in Russia today – not because of the decision of the Nobel Foundation but because of Moscow’s actions.

Is Georgia Putin’s Next Target? The Russian media have been full of reports since the start of July about Georgia as a supposed haven of Islamist terrorists, the kind of articles that could presage a new Russian attack on that country.

Russian Military Threat to Ukraine Will Never End, Horbulin Says. Volodymyr Horbulin, the director of Kyiv’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, says that Russia’s military threat to Ukraine will never end regardless of the outcome of the current conflict. He also likens Putin’s “Russian world” to the Islamist threat: the Kremlin leader’s notion is nothing but “an Orthodox ISIS.”

About the Source

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. He has served as director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn, and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Earlier he has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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